[2.6] Extra-Budget Gladiator - Roman Hobo - Fake DW Block Lacerate

Bringer of Rain - this is the cheapest 7L you'll find in a softcore league. Be able to have at least a 5.5L of offense for one chaos? Yes please! Not only that, but it gives you endurance charges on block and extra block chance. Nice!

Advancing Fortress is the gift that keeps on giving. Besides giving you +15% block, you also get some Life, a touch of Evasion Rating, and a built-in Fortify Support.

Scaeva - your main DPS weapon. Solid base DPS, plus it has increased crit chance. Put this in the right-hand weapon slot on your screen so that you can get +8% block from it. This block chance allows you to have more block chance from items as Fake Dualwield than you can get from 1 dps weapon plus any shield. Nice.

Battle

Hideout offence tooltip

Hideout defence tooltip

Lacerate 7L: Our main damage skill. The 3 extra Supports provided by Bringer of Rain allows us to choose various damage amplifiers. I use Hypothermia because Arctic Armour gives reliable Chill against any enemy not immune; you might play with Bloodlust if you find you are inflicting Bleeding often enough using other Skills like Riposte, below.

Note that Melee Physical Damage, Faster Attacks, and Blind will have limited gem levels because they are provided by Bringer of Rain.

Riposte 4L: With such high block chance, Riposte is a natural choice. My links are set up mostly for utility: but it deals a surprising amount of damage as well since it counterattacks with both weapons at once.

Frenzy 4L: I was greedy for DPS so I went 4L with this one; when I wanted more reliable defence, I had 3L Frenzy and Whirling Blades together inside Advancing Fortress to take advantage of the Fortify granted by the claw. Instead, crit gems grant me more reliable offence.

Whirling Blades 2L: Handy for getting in and out of situations like Necropolis's bone prison. Place in Advancing Fortress if you'd like more reliable Fortify defence.


Hatred, Arctic Armour, Summon Ice Golem 1L: Your "persistent buffs." I sometimes go without Ice Golem; I just like him because he is a cute little buddy. You may experiment with a CwDT Ice Golem as well for more reliability or up-time of his buff; in red-tier maps a 1L Ice Golem will die quite quickly and easily.


Ancestral Warchief, Assassin's Mark, Enduring Cry 1L: Utility skills. You may skip some or all of these if you prefer less active playstyles.

Level 93 poeplanner.com tree - very important is the Vitality Void cluster, which helps you get huge Leech. You can pick up Mana Flows near Duelist start area if you are having mana problems; 0.4% mana leech works well enough for me, but I had Mana Flows before the latest respec and it was very helpful.

Also note that we pick up +2 Endurance Charges from tree and +1 from Oak Merciless, giving us a tidy 24% flat PDR when maxed at Endurance Charges, which is quite easy and simple with Enduring Cry and Bringer of Rain's Endurance Charge on block. To help us push this to 28%, we take Soul of Steel.

Replaces my Unset Ring: Forces me to give up my cute little Ice Golem, but allows me to hit 169% all resists (i.e., Elemental Weakness Map Modifier is free item quantity and pack size) when I have 6 Endurance Charges up. The extra resistances are also useful against lower-resist abilities such as Plateau Map Boss and some Essence monsters.
Replaces my Coral Ring: Timeclasp turns one of the most annoying Map Modifiers into almost free item quantity and pack size. You'll move a little bit slower, but these Maps are very much still playable. Obtain a nonlegacy version for the greater protection against Temporal Chains.
Replaces my Coral Ring: Bloodboil similarly counteracts enemies that Chill frequently, such as Sulphur Wastes Map Bosses, Chilled Ground Map Modifier, and Waterways Map Boss. I tend only to swap on the former two, not the latter two. A 2.6.0 Dream Fragments could work as well.
Could replace my Coral Ring:
Kikazaru is not one I have tried, but this is another ring that was buffed in 2.6.0 and would theoretically help address Curse-heavy Maps, such as ones that have Enfeeble and Temporal Chains at the same time.
On weapon swap: The left The Gryphon has your typical "level for profit" gems while the right axe has something special, which is Leap Slam + Faster Attacks for crossing barriers. With my setup, this disables Arctic Armour, so I make sure to have one of my hotkeys on main setup be Arctic Armour so I can reactivate when I swap back to sword and claw. Note that Axes can be used with Lacerate, which means that you can still kill things and run fast with this weapon setup.Physical to Lightning Support is essential against Physical Reflect Maps. I use two, one to replace a crit gem in my Riposte setup and one to replace a crit gem in my Lacerate setup. This allows me to run Physical Reflect Maps like they are nothing.

The same for any melee build.

This is actually the most important part of any newb-friendly build guide and yet the hardest to write. Sadly, I am lazy, so you will probably get low quality here.

Get Life and Resistances on gear. Your DPS depends on your Weapon when you use an Attack skill in the majority of cases, and this build is no exception; make sure to pick up and identify melee Weapons you get, Augment them if necessary, and so on. Don't be afraid to use low-level Essences to make stronger weapons.

Tabula Rasa always makes for faster leveling, as well as level-appropriate Unique weapons such as Last Resort Nailed Fist. Goldrim is great for helping with Resists up through level 40 to 70, depending on your tastes. Wanderlust is great for moving fast at level 1 onwards.

My go-to leveling items:


If you want to catch some glimpses of leveling melee in action, check out my SSF Melee Witch recordings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34yBuO_DZs&list=PL7t49p6cj07FHxy5cZfP3R4lirT1iWZ1l